This week in class we did talked about Git, which it is a great tool in Free Open Source Software world. We did watched tutorial videos about what is Git, and how to work with the Git.  Git like most of the open source software’s is free. It is a distributed version control system, which it is designed to handle with speed and efficiency every kind of projects from small to very large scale. We did watch the videos that why it was so important to use a version control system, and why it is better to learn and use the Git as a distributed version control system.

Git is build to work on Linux basically but it can run also on Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. We can clone the source code of a project to our local hard driver with Git. With Git we can make much faster most operations, and it can allow us to work offline. Working offline it is very convenient thing about a developer when there is not any network access. Before going offline we can ‘fetch’ all the server data to do logs, merges, and comparison that are on server only. Another feature of the Git is that we can have the copy of everyone’s branches that are working with us in our Git repository also. This it means that we do not mess up our own material. Git is easy to learn, and some of the commands for the Git are:

1. add              Add file contents to the index
2. bisect          Find by binary search the change that introduced a bug
3. branch         List, create, or delete branches
4. checkout     Checkout a branch or paths to the working tree
5. clone            Clone a repository into a new directory
6. commit        Record changes to the repository
7. diff                Show changes to between commits, commit and working tree, etc
8. fetch             Download objects and refs from another repository
9. grep              Print lines matching a pattern
10. init                Create an empty git repository or reinitialize an existing one
11. log                 Show commit logs
12. merge           Join two or more development histories together
13. mv                 Move or rename a file, a directory, or a symlink
14. pull                Fetch from and more merge with another repository or a local branch
15. push              Update remote refs along with associated objects
16. rebase           Forward-port local commits to the updated upstream head
17. reset              Reset current HEAD to the specified state
18. rm                  Remove files from the working tree and from the index
19. show              Show various types of objects
20. status             Show the working tree status
21. tag                  Create, list, delete or verify a tag object signed with GPG

In class we had to do an exercise about how to work on git. We did install the git to our Linux OS, and the other part of the exercise it was how to config the git and how to create RSA key-pair. After creating the RSA key-pair we had to connect with our groups branches. Many of the students had success on the connection but for me and some of other students had issues on connection. I have spent time with this issue but I didn’t find the solution for it. The good thing is that even though I didn’t connect with my class branch, I did have the opportunity to test Git differently. Git has an option of the “Git Quick Start” which it gives the chance to the new beginners to test it how works on cloning and how to create a patch. Also in “Git Quick Start” is another option about how to create and commit. I did try all this option and I did love the way how the git was working and how fast and easy it was. Because I did like it, I did use git in another class “Operating System” to clone the source code of the Linux kernel and the Linux utilities. I believe that I will use the Git more frequently in the future not because of the CS401 but because it will make my work more easy.

From the blog E. Lekdushi CS401 by elekdushi and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Last class it was in some way interesting class. I was interesting because of the big discussion about what FOSS projects could be chosen for our class to work thru whole semester. I was from the start of the class but I had to live early. I was when the interested projects got listed on blackboard until when almost it did start the voting. The class was almost in different groups about each project. The projects which wherein lists are:

1. Firefox
2. Irrlicht
3. Eucalyptus
4. Libre Office
5. Sage
6. VLC

After I did leave the class, students did start to communicate in IRC channel. I was not there to take part on the discussion at IRC channel but our professor did posted the IRC discussion. From the IRC meeting logs I did learned what of the projects got chosen and how. The project that got chosen for the CS 401 class to work on is Eucalyptus and the second on list it was Irrlicht. Also, our professor did give to us all some of the assignments to do for this week, for example:

1. Play with Amazon EC2 or ECC
2. Get ECC accounts.
3. Read http://open.eucalyptus.com/wiki/EucalyptusNetworkConfiguration_v2.0
4. Decide who is on infrastructure team
5. Contact IT about configuring network port for off-campus access
6. Subscribe to eucalyptus listserv
7. start haunting #eucalyptus channel

It is going to be very busy this week. I hope that it will be fun and we learn some good stuff from it.

From the blog E. Lekdushi CS401 by elekdushi and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

On second week we did something very interesting. It was like exercise for all the class how to do the Wiki page of one our class mate. I did the Wiki page for my classmate Daniel Njoroge, and Daniel did my Wiki page. It was fun working on this small project. Before we started to work on ours friend Wiki page we did installed the Chatzilla on Firefox. The project was setup in two parts first part was installing an IRC client on our computers, and starting to practice how to communicate with our class at same time thru the IRC channel. It was real fun. My nick name is EdCS401. Mostly I did communicate with my group mates about what group nick name could we used for the group WSU CS Department Blog. After group communication the name was decided. The second part it was how to setup somebody’s Wiki page which I did mentioned above. Looks like in this class I will have great professional experience.

From the blog E. Lekdushi CS401 by elekdushi and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This passing week we had assignment about looking at two of the FOSS projects. I did find two interesting projects. First project is Amarok and the second project is MediaWiki. I did learn a lot from this assignment. I did learn about FOSS community projects how they do work, and how I can contribute on this big projects.

From the blog Eduart Lekdushi CS401 by elekdushi and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.